The History and Mystery of the Bog People

From England to Germany, the Bog People have made their way out of the earth, with a great deal of help, to give witness to brutality thousands of years old.

The modern re-introduction to this tale began in 1983 when a partially decomposed head was found near Manchester, England. It was found in the home of a man whose wife had disappeared 20 years before. An answer to a mystery.

Initial testing revealed the head belonged to a 30- to 50-year old European woman. The police confront Peter Reyn-Bardt, he confesses and goes to prison.

But subsequent carbon 14 dating shows the head to be 1,700 years old. This is not the mystery the investigators had sought to resolve. The head joins the remains of hundreds of 'bog people' who for over two hundred years have been unearthed from bogs across Europe.

These bogs possess a chemical soup perfect for preserving human flesh*. The fingerprints remained on some corpses over a thousand years old. They tell the story of European men and women at the dawn of Christianity. They tell a story of violent death.

Bludgeonings, stabbings, hangings, and probable drownings were ritually used by Europes superstitious ancestors alive in Northern Europe from 10,000 BC and 500 AD.

England's 'Lindow Man' is the perfect example of ancient ritual death.

At the age of 25, he had been killed as part of a ritual sacrifice - bludgeoned and garroted before having his throat cut. The ends of his beard had been cut on both sides, or 'stepped'” (trimmed with shears or scissors).

This is the first archaeological proof that Iron Age northern Europeans used these cutting tools. Lindow Man's intestines revealed the ingestion of mistletoe pollen, a plant sacred to the Celts, and a small piece of charred oak cake, called bannock bread. Iron Age Celts performed ritual sacrifices during “Beltain,” a spring festival that occurred when mistletoe was in bloom.

During these celebrations, pieces of bannock bread, —including one charred piece, were doled out, and the chosen one (who picked the burnt piece) was sacrificed. It is thought that mistletoe was slipped into food or eaten willingly to act as a sedative, easing the sacrifice for the sacrificed.

Netherland's 'Yde (pronounced Eed) Girl', sacrificed at the age of sixteen, was stabbed in the clavicle and hung with a woolen cord that still encircled her neck when she was uncovered in 1897.

Tollund Man of Denmark, ate the charred piece as did many others.

James M. Deem has written two excellent books and has a website dedicated subject. One of the best books is The Bog People: The Iron-Age Man Preserved by P.V. Glob

*Only two other environments preserve human remains as well - —arctic cold and dry deserts.